Planning day developments

The decisions from Planning Day have led to changes in the Council's operations. Vice Chairman, Lange Powell, and Executive Secretary, Jack Herman, report.

The Council's Planning Day in March was reported on in the May 1999 and August 1999 issues of the News. Proposals from the Planning Day have been discussed at subsequent Council meetings and developed during the year. They have led to some important and far-reaching changes in the Council's operations.

The Press Council and Complaints

The Council has undertaken a complete review and reworking of its complaints procedure to ensure that it meets the needs of publications and complainants.

It has decided to increase the use of negotiated settlements by the office and encourage Public Member participation in mediation of complaints. A new complaints procedure (see below) has incorporated these ideas and trained mediators in the office and on the Council are training the Public Members in mediation techniques, using simulated mediations. These changes have been run past the editors of the major newspapers who seem happy with the idea of such Member-led mediations in principle. The system is now ready for roll-out.

In addition to the inclusion of Public Member mediation and a greater role for negotiation by the office, the procedure has been streamlined and rewritten to make it easy to follow the steps being taken and to reduce the amount of paperwork required by all parties. The rewritten procedure is printed in this issue of the News. The Council's information booklet, which incorporates the procedure, has been revised and is being republished, and will include a new Complaints Flowchart which is numbered to parallel the complaints procedure.

The Complaints Form has also been redesigned to make it more "user-friendly" and to provide the Council with more information on a complaint and the reasons for it. It also now seeks more information on the actions taken by complainants to settle the complaint directly.

Council has decided to try and speed up the process. It now averages 13 weeks from receipt of complaint to adjudication (mediated complaints are settled more quickly). It closes unresolved complaints after six months unless there are extenuating circumstances.

Other changes in the handling of complaints include:

• the Council requiring newspapers, seeking a legal waiver from a complainant, to undertake to abide by Council procedures on mediation and publication; and
  
  
• ensuring, in the drafting of adjudications, that members are fully aware of any 'precedential' adjudications that may be relevant to the current complaint. The Council works on a case-by-case basis and no two complaints are the same, but the Council aims for consistency in its findings on similar matters.

The Council, its internal structures and procedures

The Council is aware of its responsibility to reflect a wide spectrum of community opinion in its membership and consistently to renew its membership to ensure the currency of those views.

The public has, since 1987, been represented by 7 members and there has been a panel of 5 alternates to attend in the absence of any member. In recent years the alternates have each appeared at only one or two meetings per year. The system of alternates has become less useful over the years and the Council came to consider it an inefficient use of resources. It has therefore decided to alter the composition of the Public membership, so that there will now be a Panel of 10 members, 7 of whom attend each meeting on a rotational basis. The Panel will consist of a member for each state and an additional member from each of Queensland, NSW, Victoria and South Australia. For these purposes, the ACT will be considered with NSW and the NT with South Australia. The new system, if ratified in November, comes into operation on 1 January. Two of the former Public Member Alternates, Dee Biggs and Guiliano Ursini, will be added to the seven existing Public Members to be a part of the panel. A new Public Member from south-east Queensland is being advertised for and will be appointed in January (see ad).

Members serve three-year terms. Under new rules adopted by the Council, Public and Journalist Members will be able to renominate twice. If the Chairman agrees to recommend a further term for the members, they are reappointed. At the end of their third term, the position will be declared vacant and advertised. The member can reapply but will be considered with all other nominees. The current members' terms will be considered from their first appointment to the Council as Members, and if they have already served three terms, their positions will be declared vacant when their current term expires.

The effect of the term-limit changes mean that, of the current members, the completion in 2000 of the present terms of Vice Chairman Lange Powell, Public Member Professor HP Lee and Journalist Member Peter Costigan will see their positions declared vacant and the vacancies advertised.

The Council has also implemented changes to streamline debates in Council and to improve the detail and comprehensiveness of briefings from its sub-committees - the Complaints Committee and the Freedom of the Press Committee.

In one of its most innovative moves, the Council has decided to allow for a greater opportunity to debate broad issues of concern in the media, beyond those raised by specific complaints. It will do so by allowing any member to introduce a 'question of public importance' without waiting for a complaint to be submitted.

Contemporary realities of newspaper production

The Council, its principles and its procedures were designed with the mainstream news media in mind. In recent times, the sort of publications which are being offered for sale has changed in several ways. The Council has, in particular, been looking at the publication on the Internet of versions of newspapers and magazines printed by Constituent Bodies and the development of 'lifestyle' magazines wherein the putative authors are members of the public rather than professional journalists.

Following a paper from the Executive Secretary on the possibility that the Council could deal with some or all of the on-line publications of Constituent Bodies, the Council has considered two submissions. The first from News Limited dealt with some of the concerns that might be raised on the question. A second, from Journalist Member Alternate Sybil Nolan, took a more wide-ranging view of the question. An up-dated and edited version of Ms Nolan's paper is publised in this issue of the News.

Both these submissions were sent to the major publishers for comment and the Council has now convened a meeting of representatives of the Constituent Bodies to discuss whether it should deal with such matters. If they agree that the Council should, then the system whereby such complaints should be dealt with will be considered.

The Council agreed that 'lifestyle' magazines should be treated as other publications and be subject to the principles enunciated by the Council.

In addition, the Council has discussed at length the separation of fact and opinion in news reports and opinion columns. It has developed a new policy on by-lined articles. In the Council's view, although by-lining of articles has no relevance to the determination of complaints, and complaints should continue to be judged on a case-by-case basis, it will be on the understanding that

• the Council's principles are applicable to all articles in newspapers; but
• the Council gives greater leeway in determining whether a breach of the principles has occurred to articles that are clearly opinion pieces.

The Press Council in the community

The Council is keen to improve community awareness and understanding of its purpose and services. For this reason, it has established a Promotions Committee of three members, John Radovan, Sandra Symons andJudy Taylor. Among the current projects the committee is looking at are:

• an education kit and resource material - to be aimed, inter alia, at newspaper Education sections;
  
  
• a brochure for distribution within the industry and outside, promoting the positives of press self-regulation, which is currently being developed with the assistance of a marketing expert;
  
  
• the development of training material (including wider use of case studies);
  
  
• the use of talk-back radio as an avenue for promotion, an outlet which started on ABC Radio in early November with Sandra Symons and Executive Secretary Jack Herman talking with Angela Catterns and her listeners on issues of press ethics.

The committee also hopes, in the future, to encourage newspapers to give greater prominence to Press Council material, including adjudications not affecting them; the use of 'filler' ads; and the active endorsement of the Council and its procedures.

Conclusion

The Council is continuing to discuss the matters raised at the Planning Day and there will be further developments in the Council's operations. It is looking at a further Survey of Complainants similar to one conducted in 1994 and at other ways of ensuring that its principles and procedures remain relevant. The News will report these further developments as they occur.

LANGE POWELL
JACK HERMAN

See also Planning Days index page

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